Comments on: Mail Merge - The Third Rail of Salesforce.com http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/ The Salesforce Heretic - Pushing the limits of On-Demand CRM Tue, 06 Jan 2009 01:40:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.4 by: Hobo Jojo http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-4722 Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:24:32 +0000 http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-4722 What happenned to the new word mail merge system? Don't see either heretic's code package or the Appexchange system. An easy-to-use bulk mail merge is preventing us from acquiring salesforce.com. What happenned to the new word mail merge system? Don’t see either heretic’s code package or the Appexchange system. An easy-to-use bulk mail merge is preventing us from acquiring salesforce.com.

]]> by: Salesforce Heretic » Salesforce.com Mail Merge - Part IV: http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-30 Tue, 25 Apr 2006 15:56:03 +0000 http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-30 [...] If you haven’t read them parts I, II, and III get into how were going to do the merge, as well as how we’re going to get the data. At this point we’ve settled on using the XML merge feed from the Salesforce.com UI, and we’re going to generate CSV data to get fed into Word. [...] […] If you haven’t read them parts I, II, and III get into how were going to do the merge, as well as how we’re going to get the data. At this point we’ve settled on using the XML merge feed from the Salesforce.com UI, and we’re going to generate CSV data to get fed into Word. […]

]]> by: Salesforce Heretic » Salesforce.com Mail Merge, Part III: “Spaulding, this calls for the ole Billy Barule…” http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-22 Fri, 21 Apr 2006 16:30:45 +0000 http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-22 [...] So, in a quick recap, we’ve already laid down, in general terms anyway, why we’re doing this, and generally how we’re going to do the merge. Now it’s time to get the data. [...] […] So, in a quick recap, we’ve already laid down, in general terms anyway, why we’re doing this, and generally how we’re going to do the merge. Now it’s time to get the data. […]

]]> by: Eugene Chan http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-18 Tue, 18 Apr 2006 19:49:37 +0000 http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-18 This is probably THE biggest downside to Salesforce that I can that is/will be a point of pain for day to day users. Very cool that they are addressing the issue. Thanks for the post! This is probably THE biggest downside to Salesforce that I can that is/will be a point of pain for day to day users.

Very cool that they are addressing the issue.

Thanks for the post!

]]> by: gokubi.com » Blog Archive » New mail merge facility coming soon in Appexchange… http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-17 Tue, 18 Apr 2006 19:06:50 +0000 http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-17 [...] In a comment today on a post about Word mail merge in Salesforce.com over at Salesforce Heretic, it was announced that Salesforce.com is releasing a new mail merge system via the Appexchange in the next few days. [...] […] In a comment today on a post about Word mail merge in Salesforce.com over at Salesforce Heretic, it was announced that Salesforce.com is releasing a new mail merge system via the Appexchange in the next few days. […]

]]> by: Salesforce Heretic » Salesforce.com Mail Marge, Part II: “Word made me do it…” http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-15 Tue, 18 Apr 2006 17:48:17 +0000 http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-15 [...] Back in our introduction to this series, I elaborated on some of the issues surronding Mail Merges in Salesforce.com. In this part we’re going to look at how Word handles a Mail Merge, and figure out how we’ll get our data ready to be merged. [...] […] Back in our introduction to this series, I elaborated on some of the issues surronding Mail Merges in Salesforce.com. In this part we’re going to look at how Word handles a Mail Merge, and figure out how we’ll get our data ready to be merged. […]

]]> by: Chris Hopkins http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-14 Tue, 18 Apr 2006 17:28:57 +0000 http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-14 In the defense of mail merge: When it was written (over 3 years ago, which is saying something as it has never been patched until now and there are over 15 thousand HAPPY customers using it) we had to EXACTLY duplicate the results generated by a now defunct company called hotpaper. Maybe not a great decision but there it is. Supporting conditional merge field logic was not considered (I’m really surprised it works at all). We also wanted to support a basic quoting system (opportunity stuff mentioned above) which, while not impossible using a native merge, would still require modifying the word doc at runtime. So to do that, I wrote a search and replace system that walks the document and swaps in the values. So no native merge � That said, the code that is going into production this week has a plugin system that allows people (like this gent) to swap out the standard search and replace component with their own component (perhaps one that simply runs the native word merge). You can also swap out the data generation bit. The new code is also scriptable, so it can be used in a scontrol to generate bulk results. This will be available in AppExchange soon as something you can go and install. Now as far as back end merge goes I wish you luck using open office etc. People have tried and failed to even get good support for ONE version of Office, let alone Office 2000 and up. I also wish you luck running Word on the back end to generate results (which is NOT recommended by MS and is what hotpaper did, and where are they?). NOTE: The problems with mail merge lately are related to the new production network stack dropping connections in a very unfriendly way. Our network guys are a bit baffled but since I have v 2 in the pipe (which has an upgraded network layer) we are more focused on getting that out the door, which will be this Friday (there is your timeline). In the defense of mail merge:

When it was written (over 3 years ago, which is saying something as it has never been patched until now and there are over 15 thousand HAPPY customers using it) we had to EXACTLY duplicate the results generated by a now defunct company called hotpaper. Maybe not a great decision but there it is.

Supporting conditional merge field logic was not considered (I’m really surprised it works at all).
We also wanted to support a basic quoting system (opportunity stuff mentioned above) which, while not impossible using a native merge, would still require modifying the word doc at runtime.

So to do that, I wrote a search and replace system that walks the document and swaps in the values.
So no native merge �

That said, the code that is going into production this week has a plugin system that allows people (like this gent) to swap out the standard search and replace component with their own component (perhaps one that simply runs the native word merge).
You can also swap out the data generation bit.

The new code is also scriptable, so it can be used in a scontrol to generate bulk results.
This will be available in AppExchange soon as something you can go and install.

Now as far as back end merge goes I wish you luck using open office etc. People have tried and failed to even get good support for ONE version of Office, let alone Office 2000 and up.
I also wish you luck running Word on the back end to generate results (which is NOT recommended by MS and is what hotpaper did, and where are they?).

NOTE: The problems with mail merge lately are related to the new production network stack dropping connections in a very unfriendly way.
Our network guys are a bit baffled but since I have v 2 in the pipe (which has an upgraded network layer) we are more focused on getting that out the door, which will be this Friday (there is your timeline).

]]> by: Jubub http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-12 Tue, 18 Apr 2006 09:21:51 +0000 http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-12 I´m a german user, so please excuse my english... I still fight with the conditional issue, too! We tried to work around this using Excel sheets within the Word application. Only then, describing what to do when no data is written in the required field we were able to "kill" the description in that line and also the empty line itself. For example: I don´t want Word to write "discount" when that special account gets no discount at all! It would be much easier and close to the original concept to get along using Word only... Someone´s got an idea? I´m a german user, so please excuse my english…
I still fight with the conditional issue, too! We tried to work around this using Excel sheets within the Word application. Only then, describing what to do when no data is written in the required field we were able to “kill” the description in that line and also the empty line itself. For example: I don´t want Word to write “discount” when that special account gets no discount at all! It would be much easier and close to the original concept to get along using Word only… Someone´s got an idea?

]]> by: Jaded http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-11 Fri, 14 Apr 2006 23:59:01 +0000 http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/14/mail-merge-the-third-rail-of-salesforcecom/#comment-11 Actually I can't even get mail merge to work right now with documents that exeucuted perfectly a few weeks ago. Salesforce is having serious issues with it and isn't releasing a timeline for these to be fixed. Actually I can’t even get mail merge to work right now with documents that exeucuted perfectly a few weeks ago. Salesforce is having serious issues with it and isn’t releasing a timeline for these to be fixed.

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